thanks for that.

all seems a bit “well, freddie was killed in the explosion, but thanks to modern medicine we have managed to keep his cock alive…”

Re the iodate / iodide
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potassium_iodate
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potassium_iodide

I also recall chemistry etc is very much a lego process, similarly shaped molecules nesting in appropriately shaped receptors in other molecules and all that jazz, but similar shapes is why unexpected and wrong things can bond to those receptors and cause medical issues.

So “potassium” isn’t active, it gets flushed, and so the “radiation treatment” does nothing but saturate the thyroid with “safer” iodine, it doesn’t really treat radiation at all, and it floods the thyroid with iodine, which isn’t ideal, and it doesn’t do much for the rest of the contaminated body.

Correct? ish? lol

On the issue of iodine now. As you know from your chemistry classes, the elements are classified with respect to their atomic number (number of protons in their nucleus). Another number, called mass number, shows how many protons AND neutrons an element has in its nucleous. Elements with the same number of protons (atomic number) but different number of neutrons (different mass numbers) are called isotopes. As the chemical properties of an element are determined by its atomic number alone (which determines the number of electrons in the outer shells, which are really the only ones participating in chemical reactions), two isotopes have the same chemical properties, but one of them may have too many neutrons (too high a mass number), so it could be unstable.

Such is/was the case with 131I (iodine with mass number 131). Now, iodine loves to congregate in the thyroid. So, the idiot technologist who confused the μ with the m prefices injected the patient with one thousand times more 131I than necessary for the scan, that 131I ended up into the poor guy’s thyroid, and the thyroid was fried.

As 131I is a byproduct of nuclear reactions (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iodine-131 and remember that unlike nuclear reactions, chemical reactions leave the nucleus of the participating atoms intact), potassium iodide pills flood the body with stable iodine nuclei (iodine atoms in ionic form), which are harmless, but nonetheless congregate in the thyroid. That way, the thyroid becomes saturated with stable iodine nuclei and is likely to absorb the unstable 131I.

I hope I have made myself clear(er) now. Again, my apologies if my post caused any confusion. My intention was not to show off; I just wanted to highlight a pervasive problem with some examples. Thank you for your posts, which become vehicles of exchanging great ideas.

1/ To anyone who has studied nuclear physics, it is obvious from my post I never did, I couldn’t have made such a fundamental flaw (I looked up my old textbooks, the correct data was there, clearly I never actually LEARNED in, and in the interim it got blended)

2/ I read your post / comment and know what you are saying, but don’t really understand the reasons / examples, I guess it is a potassium iodide / iodate thing? As in sounds close enough to the non expert, sounds utterly different to the expert.

3/ Following on from that, I can give you 1970 radiologist examples in my field, indeed I have done on this blog, and I know 99.99% of people who read this blog don’t even see them, because they lack the specialist knowledge in common to realise what is being said… and I could in private share similar stories from other people in other fields, that they have told me.

Since I talked about planes in the post…

Air France 296

So, you may have some screwball who specialized in radiology, got his license in 1970 (back then “radiology” was nearly synonymous to “X-rays”), and because he is considered a radiologist his now-worthless license permits him to expand to gamma cameras, which were virtually a laboratory curiosity in 1970, a totally different animal (it requires the injection of a minute quantity of a radioactive tracer—the chemical element depends on the targeted volume—into the patient’s body; look it up). I have personal experience with such screwballs. In my case, I realized the bigshot, highly-compensated radiologist had “blinded” the gamma camera. Very fortunately, though, he was trying to scan a calibration standard, called Jaczak phantom (look it up), but had that phantom been a real patient, he would have most certainly overdosed him!!!! Try explaining to a screwball like him the rudiments of nuclear instrumentation, such as paralyzable and non-paralyzable detectors, which was applicable in my case; it’s like the proverbial talking to a brick wall. Such screwballs can maim and kill people. Modern technology is wonderful, but it must be used by the knowledgeable only.

I have also heard of hushed-up fuckups in “prestigious” research centers where, for example, the medical technologist could not tell the required μCi (I guess they still use prehistoric units; the proper SI unit is the Bq) from mCi, thus overdosing the unfortunate patient with radioactive iodine (the tracer), wiping out his thyroid. From my experience, “medical physicists” usually are rejects of real physics.

I am NOT a nuclear physicist, I know I don’t know shit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_particle
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beta_particle

And both will change what they hit, alpha particles have a large chance of knocking some protons loose or creating some other radioactive isotopes, while beta particles generally dick with other electrons.